


dejection

by poisonrationalitie



Category: 19 Kids and Counting RPF, Counting On (TV) RPF
Genre: F/M, Mental Health Issues, Strained Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26834755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonrationalitie/pseuds/poisonrationalitie
Summary: noun. depression or lowness of spirits. synonyms: sorrow, melancholy, sadness, depression. Jessa reads her comments and Ben gets a call from Jeremy and the School of the Dining Room Table doesn't teach emotional intelligence. Definition taken from dictionary . com
Relationships: Ben Seewald/Jessa Duggar
Kudos: 2





	dejection

“Well?” Ben says.

“Well?” Water rushes from the tap, pouring over the dishes. Jessa stands at the sink with her back to him, and takes a stained plate from the basin. Her hair falls in waves to her waist almost perfectly, only marred by a couple of thick knots caught in the length. She’s still beautiful, he thinks. Despite it all.

“Are we going to talk about this?” he asks.

“I don’t think we need to,” she says tightly. Her elbow knocks Spurgeon’s plastic water bottle to the floor. Liquid leaks from the not-quite-completely-screwed-on lid, dribbling miserably across the floor. Jessa takes a scrubbing brush firmly in hand and starts on the plate. Ben doesn’t get up. Instead, he looks down at his hands, which are laced together and resting on the dining table, only two inches away from a rejected glob of mashed potato. It looks kind of dejected. He feels dejected. He learned that word from Jeremy, who called him up for the second time since marrying Jinger just last week. He’d gone on and on, and Ben had been watching cars driving past out the window more than he'd been listening, but he’d caught the word ‘dejected’. _Thanks, Jeremy,_ he thinks.

He tries to recall the rest of what Jeremy had said – for he had been the first one to bring it up, and clearly he hadn’t been all that wrong about it, either, given the calls and texts and comments flooding in since. Maybe he’d actually been trying to help. Maybe Jinger had asked him to call. Ben shrugs it away. Whatever the reason was and whoever started it didn’t matter all that much, in the end. He studies the mashed potato. It’s as white as new baby poop. Actually, he doesn’t know if that’s all that normal, but all three of his kids had it and they’re all still alive, so it can’t be that bad.

“I think we probably should,” he says, getting sick of the mashed potato. The bristles of the brush grind into the plate, and the tap’s still running. He waits for a bit, leaning back in his chair. The two front legs lift off the ground. She doesn’t say anything. He lands abruptly, and his toe hits a toy truck. It skitters away. “Jessa?”

“Hang on,” she says. The plate clatters. He watches her cross the kitchen and dry her hands on a stained tea towel, before turning to him. She puts her hands on her hips. “What?” There _are_ lines under her eyes, he realises. Huh. She raises her eyebrows at him expectantly. He screws up his face, thinking. There are certain things you do and don’t say to your wife, he’s been told, and everything he can think of falls under the category of ‘don’t’.

“You look beautiful,” he tries. Her brows fall, but she doesn’t smile.

“Thanks,” she says flatly. Right. Okay. Well, they’ve started the conversation on a good note, at least.

“Are – are you okay?” he asks. She stares at him, mouth just a thin line.

“Fine,” she says. He nods, blinking, and turns his eyes to a photograph from their wedding. She smiled there, all teeth and bright eyes. He smiled too. It had been easier then. Their biggest worry had been that Jill and Derick had beaten them to the altar, as if that was the worst offence they could commit. He almost snorts. She drops her hands and heads back into the kitchen, and he pulls his gaze from the photo.

“No, Jessa-”

“ _What?”_ she demands, voice sharp. He stops. She sighs. “Sorry.” She leans against the counters, eyes skyward. He wonders if the apology was for him or God. He decides not to ask. Instead, he tries to form a sentence that actually says what he wants it to. They all seem out of his grasp.

“People are worried about you,” he manages. She doesn’t take her eyes off the ceiling.

“I know. I can read.”

“I know,” he says. His fingers twist together. “I just-”

“I’m working on it,” she says roughly. “It is what it is. I’ll be fine.” She avoids looking at him as she returns to the sink. That’s it, then. He folds his hands together and sets his head down on them, watching her turn over the plates, and then the pots. Soap suds fizzle awkwardly on the drying rack, slipping down onto the bench below. After an age, the tap stops running.

She shakes her hands out, and switches off the light. Only the yellow glow from the hallway allows him to see.

“I’ll check on Ivy, and then we can go to bed,” she tells him. Her face hardly moves as she talks. She does seem – _different_ to the girl in their wedding photos, to the girl he courted. _Dejected._ For all of Jeremy’s vocabulary lessons, he can’t actually remember any instructions on what to _do_ about it. Pray, he supposes. But Jessa prays plenty, more than she ever has, actually. She prays more and fasts more and quotes more scripture, even when they make love. To be honest, it puts him off a bit. Well, that and the fact that she hardly moves these days; he has to keep checking she hasn’t fallen asleep.

She walks down the hall, leaving him in the darkened main room. He groans as he stands up, head heavy, and doesn’t bother tucking the chair in. Instead of following her, he stops by the picture that caught his attention earlier, and stares at bride-Jessa. Happy Jessa. He remembers the feel of her slim waist under his hands, and the electricity shooting through him when they touched lips for the first time in the back of the church. They’d clacked teeth on account of neither one of them being able to stop smiling. He’d been devoutly thankful the cameras hadn’t captured that.

“Ben!” she calls, and his feet follow the implicit instruction before he can think. He reaches the bedroom and starts to change. She gathers her clothes in a bundle, held to her chest, and changes in the bathroom. He frowns, but it’s not unusual, these days. Jeremy helpfully advised him once that it was because women get very self-conscious about their figures after having a baby. She returns and dumps today’s clothes in a vague dirty laundry pile in the corner. He pegs his discarded jeans towards the pile. Jessa ducks, and climbs into bed when the coast is clear.

He slides in, grabbing a crumpled blanket from the end of the bed and pulling it over himself. “Take some,” he says, but she doesn’t, rolling onto her side. He grimaces. They lay in the dark, and he stares up at the roof, listening to cars going past – it’s one of the things that comes with a house on the main road. Her breathing doesn’t deepen and he knows she’s awake. He thinks a silent prayer, but no answers come to him.

“Goodnight, Jessa,” he says, in lieu of any epiphanies. He knows that word from church. “I love you.”

“Goodnight,” she says, and her voice is thick and wet. He waits for an ‘I love you, too’. It doesn’t come.

 _Maybe we’re both dejected,_ he thinks, turning on his side away from her. He falls asleep easily.


End file.
